


"Hope" vs. "Morale": Contrasting Different Approaches to Emotional Sustenance [Meta]

by osteophage



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Emotions, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osteophage/pseuds/osteophage
Summary: Metacommentary about different approaches to emotions in fiction, some of those approaches being more sentimental than others.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	"Hope" vs. "Morale": Contrasting Different Approaches to Emotional Sustenance [Meta]

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written in March (which is why it's being added to the MMMC collection) and has been crossposted to [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/1179496).

In my previous analysis [applying the concept of queer futurity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319517) to the Machineries of Empire, I cut a lot of details and plot summary in order to focus on just the parts that matter for the sake of that analysis, which happened to mean, in that case, that I was functionally eliding a lot of the most brutal and violent elements of the story. Because of this, while writing, I started to become concerned that I was making this series sound like a "hopeful" story. In fact, I even thought about going off topic and adding unnecessary detail and disclaimers just to establish what type of story this is, just in case anybody gets the wrong idea. Once I thought about it, though, I began to wonder what it even means for something to be a "hopeful" story. I can't necessarily predict for you how any given book will make you feel. All I can really do is analyze what's there on the page.

In that spirit, I'm returning to my notes in order to explore a couple of different approaches to psychological/emotional states in fiction:There's the approach that expresses an affective investment in passionate or hopeful characters as something personally evocative and invigorating in its own right, and then there's... not doing that.

Note that for my purposes here, I'm using **"emotional sustenance"** to mean something more particular than just good feelings -- I'm talking **the emotional cluster of hope, will, optimism, morale, good spirits, whatever you want to call it** : the emotions that sustain you, any faith in the possibility of good outcomes, and the affective core of looking ahead and staying the course. I couldn't think of a better umbrella term to use for these sorts of things, so that's what we're going with for now.

Note, also, that this post does contain spoilers for the trilogy.

### Affective Investment in Emotional Sustenance

You may or may not have seen this before: someone starts talking about the importance of "hope" in storytelling, not just in a structural or pragmatic sense for the sake of narrative payoff, but rather, because those things, themselves, are understood as good. These are the perspectives that extol the ["power of hope,"](https://ricardovictoriau.com/2020/03/09/the-power-of-hope/) ["weaponized optimism,"](https://www.vox.com/2018/12/27/18137571/what-is-hopepunk-noblebright-grimdark) and so on. This may or may not involve the word "hope" by name, but that is the typical term used, since the approach does generally frame emotional sustenance as something itself almost infectiously uplifting (i.e. hopeful characters beget hopeful readers and hopeful metacommentary). By waxing poetic about hope in this way, **this approach celebrates hope as something that is supposed to be emotionally evocative and encouraging for the reader.**

It's not just about "hope," though. More generally I've also seen this same approach applied to [sincerity](https://ariaste.tumblr.com/post/163500138919/ariaste-the-opposite-of-grimdark-is-hopepunk), passion, determination, attachment, and psychological endurance. Alexandra Rowland, for example, in the [Atom of Justice](https://festive.ninja/one-atom-of-justice-one-molecule-of-mercy-and-the-empire-of-unsheathed-knives-alexandra-rowland/) essay, seems to place a high value on "sheer, simple, bloody-minded obstinacy" and directs readers to "give a f*ck about the world around you."

Note the imperative verb in the sentence structure there: this isn't just a description of narrative structure or story features. This is a dictate for you, as a person, in reality. In other words, there's a slippage here from talking about genre features to addressing people in the real world. This approach demonstrates an affective investment in the concept, with **speakers talking about, depicting, or reading about certain desirable feelings in fiction in order to evoke the same feelings in reality.**

This is something I thought about while re-reading the Machineries of Empire trilogy because in the books, the characters do talk about and reflect on emotional sustenance of a similar kind -- but it's handled there in a very different way.

### Affective Detachment from Emotional Sustenance

For people operating from the perspective described above, I can't rule out the possibility that the Machineries of Empire series might meet their criteria. It's quite possible they'd appreciate, for instance, the characters who "decide to be a stubborn motherf*cker who refuses to die," as Rowland put it, or grit their teeth and keep walking into the wind and so on and so forth. There are also some salient divergences, though, that I'd like to explore: starting with the tone, but also including certain elements of the characters and in-universe military strategy.

#### Emotional Resignation

Right off the bat, _Ninefox Gambit_ opens on a battle scene, and the tone of the narration here is very grim. That itself isn't remarkable, but the particulars of it express **a distinct lack of sentimentality** in how the point-of-view character responds to death and loss. "There was no time to mourn Sparrow 3." "The other Kel companies hadn't had to die they way they had, smeared into irrelevance." "Cheris winced, but there was nothing to be done now." "They had failed to obey her, and that was that." "Cheris noted [the death of Kel Dezken] in passing. Terrible timing, but Kel luck was frequently bad." These deaths add to the brutality of the scene and yet, at the same time, are written off in a tone of **flat resignation**.

Worse still: it's not just that these deaths and bad outcomes happen, but that the scene ends on a despairing note of **futility and wasted sacrifice**.

These elements establish the bleakness of the situation and set the tone for the rest of the novel.

#### Moral Resignation

In _Ninefox Gambit_ , the main point-of-view protagonist, Kel Cheris, is a soldier of the hexarchate (an evil empire). **This is already at odds with the 1:1 approach to narrative affect because it creates a sense of moral dissonance for the reader.** Even if you pick up the book without having heard any outside perspective on the story, it doesn't take long to figure out, wait a minute... this hexarchate she's fighting for seems... pretty bad. And it is. The hexarchate is downright oppressive and evil. Yet _Ninefox Gambit_ drops you into the point of view of a character who's committed to serving it. If you aren't willing to read the story as seen through her eyes, if you exclusively want stories from the perspectives of victims and rebels, then I expect you will find this book unsatisfying for giving you the "wrong" protagonist.

Granted, if you're willing to wade through this battle scene, there are some brief hints that you're not supposed to think of Cheris as the "hero" -- and just because you're being invited into her perspective doesn't mean you're being asked to root for her to win. For example, these two sentences immediately stood out to me:

> The Eels called themselves the Society of the Flourish, although the hexarchate didn't use this name. Taking away people's names denied their power, a lesson Cheris tried not to think about.

That "Cheris tried not to think about" this lesson demonstrates that she's avoiding something, some kind of realization about what exactly it is that she's serving. This glimmer of doubt allows the reader to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Cheris might be persuaded to change sides. But even so, even if you decide to keep reading past the first chapter, that still means you have to stick with **the perspective of a protagonist who is actively involved in suppressing rebellions.**

Brezan, though -- Brezan is possibly the best example the series has of an impassioned idealist. If you're looking for a character who demonstrates passionate emotional investment in doing his best to make the world a less-awful place, well, he's your man.

Unfortunately, your man might disappoint you, because although he definitely fulfills certain moral and emotional criteria, his character arc is not exactly an uplifting one. Over the course of _Raven Strategem_ , his personal role in the plot begins to allow for a truer expression of his idealism and then, in _Revenant Gun_ , subsequently forces that idealism to erode. By the end of the trilogy, he's gone through a lot of changes both from an emotional and an ethical standpoint, in that **his affective intensity has flattened and he's resigned himself to "making the hard decisions,"** i.e. going against his moral principles in the name of strategy. For me, that turn was extremely depressing. And if you're looking for an impassioned hero who's never dissuaded from an unflagging commitment to their ideals, I imagine you won't be happy with him either.

And then... there's Jedao. Good god, where do I even start with Jedao? As much as Jedao does technically fit some of the descriptions outlined by Alexandra Rowland (I mean, talk about gritting your teeth against long odds and refusing to die...), and as much as he does have some sympathetic motivations, the means by which he pursues his goals are so staggeringly violent that the term "anti-hero" feels pathetically inadequate.

To save from getting into the details, though, let me put it like this. In Rowland's example, if a man has a gun to your friend's head, then the response is simple: "Punch the man with the gun. Save your friend." Jedao's strategy, meanwhile, is less like punching the man with the gun and more like taking the gun and shooting his friends himself, over and over again, as part of a long con he's running in the hopes of one day, possibly, maybe getting to achieve something else. Is that at all compatible with what Rowland describes? You tell me.

I'd leave it at that, but I have one more thing to say about Jedao: he's kind of a complicated case when it comes to moral resignation. On the one hand, from one angle, Jedao demonstrates the extremes of the concept. On the other hand, Jedao more than any other character shows an unrelenting commitment to his ultimate goal. This goal does involve a morally sympathetic element, which is why the term "anti-hero" is even on the table in the first place -- he does, basically, want to make the world a better place, and he's completely devoted himself to that purpose. Yet as the saying goes -- cool motive, still murder. 

My point isn't to wave off the murder as irrelevant but rather to argue that, in a very narrow sense, **Jedao is the _least resigned_ of any character when it comes to one _specific_ thing, even if he is the most resigned when it comes to everything else.** And this means he's basically impossible to accurately categorize without dispensing with the binary of kind selfless enduring idealist who never stops trying vs. cynical pessimistic dirtbag who shrugs and gives up on the world.

#### The Strategic Importance of Morale

If you wanted to talk about "the power of hope" within fiction, well, this series could arguably make the case -- because emotional sustenance actually is treated as important by the characters. However, the concept is regarded in such calculating, dispassionate terms that instead of "the power of hope," you might as well call it "the strategic importance of morale." Let me give you four examples.

One: Kel formation fighting. Early on in _Ninefox Gambit_ , it's noted that for formation fighting, "each soldier's state of mind mattered, or else the exotic effects would falter." Morale is important because morale is literally essential to powering certain sci fi technology being used by the hexarchate. In other words, this is a case where **hope and determination serve to benefit the forces of evil**. This does align with perspectives that place a high value on emotional sustenance, but it breaks with the expectation that it's only important to rebels and heroes.

Two: In _Raven Strategem_ , Brezan and Tseya discuss the "damage" that certain heretical broadcasts are doing to to "public morale." Tseya complains that the hexarchs have been too "tepid" in their response, especially the Shuos hexarch, who is responsible for "managing information fallout." This conversation takes place for point-of-view character Brezan, who aligns with Tseya's perspective here. This means, again, that moral dissonance is created for readers who are rooting against the hexarchate, but it also means that the characters aren't conceiving of rebel broadcasts as "increasing hope." They're describing them as as doing "damage" to "public morale," aligning morale with loyalty to the hexarchate. This once again highlights the moral neutrality of emotional sustenance and handles the topic in **extremely dry, strategic terms, operating at a remove from the emotions themselves.**

Three: In _Ninefox Gambit_ , "morale" is framed as something important for the rebels, as well, but again **from the "wrong" point of view.** As Jedao explains to Cheris, "Breaking the enemy's will has always been important." And so he devises a ploy to erode their emotional sustenance -- to overwhelm them, to break their will -- in order to accomplish other strategic objectives, and he succeeds.

Four: Further into _Ninefox Gambit_ , Jedao devises **a battle strategy that relies on _increasing_ enemy morale in order to pull a trick.** Vahenz, one of his opponents, sees through the trick but realizes that she can't do anything to avert it: "I can't blame the Fortress's people for the festivities, but they've given Jedao a disastrous opening. The hell of it is that we can't disclaim the victory as an enemy ploy; it would hurt morale." Here she's caught between recognizing the strategic advantage they're giving to Jedao and yet also putting a high value on "morale," not out of empathy or personal investment but as a strategic necessity.

In these examples, characters express an investment in maintaining or manipulating the emotional sustenance of other characters, but that investment isn't a matter of personally mirroring those exact same emotions, or at least, not exactly. **Emotional sustenance is handled dispassionately and pragmatically** as a means to an end, a strategic consideration, a necessity for making sure people fall into line with your other plans.

Because of these three elements -- the emotional resignation, the moral resignation, the strategic outlook on morale -- I consider TMOE to feature a lot affective detachment and moral dissonance. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its bright spots, and there are certainly things that the characters care passionately about -- even some morally good things, at that -- but I imagine that this series might be frustrating to readers looking to avoid this much in the way of moral and emotional resignation.

### Conclusion

In analyzing these things, I'm not actually trying to define which stories are "hopeful" and which ones are not. That's not really a worthwhile question to me. Instead, I'm trying to pry apart some of the elements in play in how we interpret the affective resonance of stories, as well as highlight the flexibility of relationships between morality, politics, and emotional sustenance. I consider the Machineries of Empire series a fascinating case to think about for this purpose, in part because it repeatedly highlights the value of morale in such a cynical and disaffected way.

With that said, that's not the full extent of the possible comparisons and contrasts. For instance, I'm compelled by the romanticism in some of Rowland's descriptions -- "the night is dark and the fight is long" and yet "you grit your teeth, and bear the pain, and keep going" -- and in some ways, I think Jedao's story can be read as the purest expression of that ideal. On the other hand, Jedao is also a character who literally shoots his friends, willing to trade others' lives in the name of his grand schemes, which makes him vastly incompatible with the heroic kindness that Rowland describes in the same piece. It's difficult to balance a complete articulation of the complexity involved. In my previous piece, I think I erred on the side of making the story sound too triumphant, and in this one, I might be making it sound too heartless and glum.

If there's any takeaway here, then I hope it's this one: there's more than one possible approach to emotional sustenance -- to hope, morale, determination, whatever aspect or subcategory you want to emphasize. Different readers and writers may have different preferences for which one suits them best. In spelling out some of the possible components, I've tried to offer some vocabulary for you to figure out or articulate the preferences of your own.


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